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I'm not even going to try to rein in my enthusiasm. Right now it's all about Michelle in her green dress, the smiling Obama children, and Barack saying, at the top of the Iowa speech last night, "I just want to say, I have a good looking wife and children."
Call me old-fashioned, call me a fashionista who loves to see classic couture meet the new black aesthetic, call me fashioning a blog post out of a media moment, but I ran downstairs and got my son from his room. I wanted to make sure that, even though he's only three-and-a-half years old, he could see a new kind of Presidential family. I wanted to make sure he could see what the world looks like, circa today.
He, of course, was more interested in eating some of my Larabar and throwing his piggy over the banister.
But still. The moment made me think of all the moments my mother made sure I had. My mother made sure BB King kissed me when I was a baby and we happened to be in the same place in the same time. My mother made sure my aunt took me to see Stevie Wonder perform when I was in the fourth grade, and my aunt made sure I asked Cicely Tyson, who was in the audience, for her autograph.
In high school, my mother made sure the PBS series about the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize, was a family event, complete with popcorn and background commentary. She made sure I met Nelson Mandela at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, made sure I read Rosa Guy, made sure I knew why we had pictures of Frederick Douglas and Langston Hughes on our walls.
My mother made sure I knew both Bob Marley's music and the legacy of Michael Manley, the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica. She made sure I talked to Harry Belafonte when we were at the same dinner, and that the great African novelist Ayi Kwei Armah broke bread at our dinner table. She made sure I traveled to other counties, countries, and continents. She made sure I went to college.
I have tremendous gratitude for these and the many, many other gifts my mother gave me. She made sure I had real examples of greatness to inspire me to become a human being of integrity, a person unafraid to challenge the unchallengeable, and willing to speak my truth no matter how controversial.
Watching Obama tonight reminded me of how important it is to give our children glimpses of greatness in whatever form we can, and how each moment builds on the last. During Obama's speech I thought of all the things I want to make sure my son knows.
I want to make sure he knows about the Afro-Asian monuments of Angkor Wat, the contributions to world peace of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I want to make sure he knows about the Hawaiian struggle for land and culture, and I want to make sure he knows about the first African-American to throw her hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination: Ms. Shirley Chisolm.
I want him to see Stonehenge and the Pyramids, Easter Island and the Parthenon. I want to make sure he understands how long human beings have walked this earth, and how they've expressed themselves all along in ways that have affected the evolution of the species.
There are so many things I want to make sure my son sees and knows, but I realize as I reach the end of this post that most of all, more than anything else in the world, I want to make sure my son knows how much I love him.
Which perhaps is why, when he threw his piggy over the banister instead of sitting down and staring into the television screen, I laughed and let him go running after it.
What do you want to make sure your children see? What do you want to make sure they know? What's the most important thing?
